Thanksgiving Box Project

Thanks to the generosity of friends all over the US were able to provide food boxes to 80 families at Thanksgiving

Here are the boxes all packed with the dry goods

The recipients check in with Ann

then sign a thank you card

Peggy Long gets a frozen hen to add to the boxes

the boxes head home

John Carroll helps carry boxes to waiting cars

Holly Spring sponsored Work Team

Holly Spring Friends Meeting organized a group to come down from North Carolina. While here they helped take care of several projects around the center as well as helping hang drywall in a community home.

Here are some pictorial highlights.

Ken Spivey, Duane Long and Joe Allen work on a new counter top on the island in the director's house

Ken and Duane check out the finished project

John Carroll and Joe Allen replace the tub surround in the director's house.

Sterling and Bryce dig holes to install new fence posts

Billy Hedrick and Joe Allen came behind and installed the new posts

Carol lives just down the road from the center. She and her son live in this camper

Carol is trying to get her new house finished enough to move into

first step was to finish leveling the house

finishing up some framing

then Billy Hedrick and Jimmy Spivey could start measuring for drywall

Will Allen and Corey York get a piece cut

Duane Long and Ken Spivey get it nailed to the wall

Pat Cheadle and Phyllis Belle sort clothes for our weekly Re-Sale

After a day of hard work, everyone enjoyed our evening meals

We're not sure why Billy was eating by himself

Our evenings ended with a time of worship & prayer
Thank you Lord for a safe and productive week.

A special thanks to the entire team:
Joe Allen
John Carroll
Corey York
Bill Hedrick
Duane & Peggy Long
Pat Cheadle
Phyllis Belle
Ken Spivey
Jimmy Spivey

and then there was our awesome staff
Will Allen
Bryce Kincaid
&
Sterling Brown

New Blog Site

Check out our new blog site at:
http://mowachoctawfriendscenter.blogspot.com/

June will be a jumping

Hello one and all.. This is Ann, we are beginning to get our feet under us and have time to do things like blog.

We are expecting June to be an exciting and challenging month for the Friends Center.

Ally joined the team here in Bama in late May and hit the ground running. Interns are vital blood to many programs and we suspect it will be the same here.

Irene and Ally and I will begin our first ever "summer reading program" this starts on Tuesday June 1st and every Tuesday following when it doesn't interfere with SOUL programming. We may have many come, we may have none, we'll see. We hope to raise awareness of how wonderful books can be, and that they are located right here in our neighborhood.

Ally and Dwight have spent hours working in the computer lab, checking out the inventory of learning software and the conditions of the computers. This program also is to begin on Tuesday. 2 hours a day the lab will be open for people to come and keep their summer learning skills on track. So if you are interested, come join us from 10 to 12.00

Saturday will be our first endeavor into a community meal. (mine and Tim's) that is. Brunch will be served in celebrations of the fathers in our lives. Biscuits and Gravy and pancakes and yummy stuff will be served... Interns coming in from NC.. beware that's your first morning here.. be ready to jump from bed and be ready to serve!!

Womens Bible study begins at the lodge on Thursday at 9:00 am.

So there you go... plug in if you can we'll see you soon

Montreat College Visits MOWA Choctaw

A few weeks ago a college group from Montreat sacrificed their spring break to travel down to Alabama and serve the Friends Center and the community. We all had an absolute blast! Led by Lyndsey Wall and Chaplain Steve, this group was a model of hard work, servanthood, and a Christ-centered heart.

Here are some of the things this group worked on during their week-long stay:

• Built a ramp on a trailer in the community
• Put up gutters on Quaker Lodge
• Tilled the garden at McIntosh Elementary School
• Worked with kids in the After School Program
• Led Youth Group
• Hosted a community meal and Bingo night
• Visited homes in the community (with cookies & brownies!)
• Stained a porch in the community
• Organized the Re-Store building

On top of all this, we also had a few ladies in the community who, along with Pat Cheadle (who does it all), cooked meals for us every day. Personally, that was one of my favorite parts of the week! But I also enjoyed and appreciated the fellowship, devotion, and hangout/debriefing time very much. How great a blessing it is when God sends brothers and sisters into your life to lift you up! And we have been lifted here at MOWA Choctaw.

Let us not give up meeting together... but let us encourage one another - and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

(Hebrews 10:25)

Everyone at the MOWA Choctaw Reservation Museum

The ramp building crew

Yes, we're still here...

Hello friends! Sorry for the lack of activity over the past few months. There has been a lot going on! I hope that I will be able to catch you up on some of the things we have been up to recently, but first things first.

THANK YOU JENNIFER AND COREY!!! The directors of the center over the past two years have completed their calling here and have moved back to North Carolina. I could try to tell you all how much they mean to this community and how much they have accomplished, but my words would fall way too short. Take a look at all of the posts on this blog to catch a glimpse of their impact. We miss you both so much!

We have had a lot of visitors in 2010, including Montreat College just last week, but I will save them for their own post and tell you about a few other individuals.

Pat Cheadle has been down with us multiple times, teaching pine needle basket weaving and quilting classes. All of the people that meet and talk with her absolutely love her - that goes for us, too! She has made an amazing impact on a lot of people, but especially some of the ladies near the center. They even forced her to do a Bible study with them one day last week so that they could see her one more time before she left for home! Thank you Pat, your willing and gentle spirit is welcome with us any time (and your cooking too!).

Anne Humes from Pennsylvania visited in January and February during her annual trek south to Alabama. She did crafts with our kids in the After School Program, which they loved, and she also joined us for a community meal. Her commitment to this center is amazing - she has been down every winter since the mid-1980s! Thank you so much Anne for your dedication!

Finally, Dale and Janet Smith came for a visit in early March to help us paint the inside of the director's house. They are very close friends with our interns Sterling and Bryce, and I know they loved having them down with us, as did I. They were such great and talented workers and painters that they pretty much finished the house in one day. Thanks Dale and Janet for your generosity and friendship - we had a great time with you!

Lots of other things have been happening in the midst of all our visitors, but hopefully this will satisfy some of you that have been calling for updates! Thank you for your interest and support in this ministry and community. It is challenging for us right now without our fearless leaders Jennifer and Corey, but God is still working in awesome ways in and through the lives of the people here. We are enjoying the opportunity to be a part of it!

MOWA In 2010 - College Missions And Cold Weather

Happy 2010! I hope everyone is having an awesome new year, because ours started off with a real bang! A college missions group of 20 came down for the first week of January to serve the center and the community, and even though the weather was frigid (yes, even in southern Alabama), we were all so blessed and filled by God's Spirit during our time together. It was great to see old friends from Western and NC Yearly Meetings and to make new ones as well.

I'll try to list some of the projects and activities they accomplished, but they did so much I'm sure to miss something. We will have to get some pictures up soon, but until then...

• Visitation to the local jail
• Volunteered at McIntosh Elementary School
• Tutored, organized games, and led devotions at our After School Program
• Led Youth Group
• Painted/redecorated part of the lodge
• Home visitations in the community
• Replaced underpinning on the lodge
• Massive amounts of yard work around the property
• Daily group devotions, which were personally so challenging, encouraging, and literally dripping with God's presence - I'm serious, there was nothing that could have served us as staff here more than those simple worship times

Thank you so much, all of you who were a part of this trip. I hope you received as much of a blessing as we did here at MOWA Choctaw! I'll leave you with a piece of God's Word that really lingered on my heart after one of our devotions - ahem, sermon - led by Steve Pedigo.

The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment: "For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.  -1 Corinthians 2:15-16 (emphasis added)

Christmas Time at MOWA

So, wow...it's been a few months since anyone has updated our page. We didn't forget about our faithful readers, we only got to busy to take the time to write, so please excuse us.
We have had many things going on including Corye and I being out of town for a few weeks in October, to visit family. We left Will here to take care of the property, handle after school, take the youth group on trips, and head up a Halloween movie night. Will said that the van was full of teens for the youth group outting to the "hell house", and he said that everyone had a great time. Will also said that the Haloween movie noght went great and that there were over 50 people in attendance for it. He was able to give a way prizes to everyone and serve lots of yummy food.
After Corey and I got back, we enjoyed a Thanksgiving community meal with around 50 people, including men, women, and children from all over the community. We were able to give away a bunch of door prizes and even some folks were able to take home some food since we had almost to much to fit on the table.
This past week we were blessed by several visitors. Andy Lambert and Larry Doub from Forbush Friends Meeting brought presents for 12 of our After School kids, along with items for our christmas sell. We also had John Carroll and Ken Spivey, along with two other friends bring down gifts for all the rest of our ASP kids and the rest of Christmas re-store. We are so thankful to everyone who sent down items both as gifts for kids and for christmas re-store.
We are also so blessed to have Patsy Cheadle down for the next couple weeks. She is going to be teaching pine needle basket weaving and quilting to anyone willing to learn. So far we have had 6 ladies, four teenagers, one child, and corey, will and myself learning how to make these things. We are having a blast learning how to weave baskets. Patsey also went out to pizza hut with the youth group the other night. We had such a great time, and ended up having to take the van and our car because we had so many people.
Coming up this week, we are looking forward to more basket making with Patsy, and starting quilts with her. We will be having our Christmas re-store sale on Tuesday. We are excited that we will be visiting the jail again this year, on wednesday, to take "Goody bags" including a couple cookies, razor, toothbrush, and a Bible. with this visit we are hoping to also be able to pray with the inmates and possibly see what some of their needs are. We will be having our youth group Christmas party this week to, so that Will can join us since he leaves for home on Friday, pray for no rain so that we can have our bonfire as planned. Then on Saturday we are looking forward to our last Community movie night of the year. We are going to be watching a Christmas movie and having lots of food. The last couple things that we will do before our christmas break is to give out christmas "cheer" to the community folks that live right around us, i believe hot cocoa is going to be it again. And we will be having our ASP christmas party, where all the kids will recieve their gifts that everyone has sent down.
We can hardly believe that the year is almost over as things have flown by so fast. Things have been so busy here, and there is always an activity going on that requires lots of energy and time, but we must be having fun because time has jsut flown by.
We hope that everyone has a fantastic and blessed christmas. We sure do feel blessed already through all your prayers and support of us and the community. We hope that our next blog won't take as long as this one to be posted, but be patient as we are staying busy at this wonderful time of year.
Merry CHRISTmas to everyone <><